Hungry

Yesterday, I discovered Will Allen, known for his Growing Power organic farms and market on Silver Spring, has just opened a new deli/market on Martin Luther King Drive, the Growing Power Café. When you enter the store, you notice how bright and shiny new everything feels. The deli counter faces the door as you walk inside and there are high tables with stools in front of the big windows facing King Drive. The market in the rear features a variety of Growing Power vegetables and organic packaged goods with an emphasis on local food and they have two kinds of…

I get up and begin my day with a slice of toast like I do every day. I always have hearty whole wheat or oatmeal bread either store bought or home made.  While I drink my tea, I pick up the NYT book review as I often do in the morning and begin to read a review of the book White Bread by Aaron Bobrow-Strain. I learn that because it was believed that bread was often made in unsanitary conditions, they industrialized it. Something called the iron roller was developed which squeezed out the wheat germ where all the nutrition lies,…

The other day I had the good fortune to be invited to a dinner/poetry reading at the Amaranth Bakery. The café is on Lisbon Avenue at 34th street, not far from West Side Academy ll where 8th graders had written poems and made drawings using African Adinkra symbols. Later, the project was expanded to include symbols of peace including mandalas, circles of peace and American Indian symbols. The work was then compiled into a  beautiful glossy paper book called Life is a Dark Crystal. Their goal is “to use art (poetry, drawings) to facilitate peacemaking and intergenerational and interracial dialogue.”…

We were sitting in the Piggly Wiggly grocery store on Capitol Drive across from Midtown shopping center handing out election reminders to people who came to shop. “Are you cooking on Mother’s Day?” Sadie kept asking the women coming by where we sat waiting with our clipboards to register potential voters. That question usually stopped them long enough for us to get their attention and for me to slip an election reminder, a tiny piece of bright yellow paper, into their hands. Sometimes we did a kind of Laurel and Hardy routine, and she asked if they were planning to cook, and I asked if they…

Quaint cottage style dwelling just north of downtown. Large shared bedroom, living and dining room area. Courtyard access. 4 bdrm, 1.5 roosts, unlimited bth Up to 4 henents allowed. (Females only) Courteous and attentive landlords offering full catering, cleaning and turndown services. Green roof with rain barrel for the eco-conscious featherhead This is a must see for any serious scratcher! When Beth Higgins, an architectural student, saw the poster outside the School of Architecture looking for people to compete in a chicken coop building contest, she knew it had to be creative to compete with architecture students. And she thought…

Today, I gave a little boy a large ball for no reason other than he wanted it. It was lunchtime, and I was hungry, but I was even hungrier for an out-of-town grandchild. The little boy must have been about 2 years old, and he stood in front of the large plastic cone shaped ball holder and stared at them in amazement.  Red, yellow, blue balls big and shiny, and he spread his arms wide and said “Big ball!” over and over, turning toward his young mother in excitement.         His mother said, “We’re not buying that!” and told him…

If you didn’t catch the New York Times article of March 11, 2012, then you didn’t catch the latest news about “fake chicken.” In October, NYT writer Mark Bittman visited a place in The Hague called The Vegetarian Butcher where he was treated to a chicken substitute he found palatable. “The plant-based products were actually pretty good — the chicken would have fooled me if I hadn’t known what it was…” He goes on to say, “the vegetarian meat I ate in The Hague isn’t widely distributed, but Quorn, a mushroom-based product can be pretty appealing in some instances…” He…

During the time I was circulating petitions in the Scott Walker recall campaign, I began getting signatures outside Lena’s grocery store and deli on Teutonia and Capital Drive. I had a bird’s eye view of a steady stream of shoppers coming and going all day long. They filed past me on their way into Lena’s, smiling politely and treating me like a guest, a bit odd, somewhat unpredictable, but a guest just the same. After several days spent hugging the building to stay warm, I did the obvious and went inside Lena’s to see what the fuss was about. Some people…

Today, a friend reminded me that there are almost no grocery stores on the near west side of Milwaukee. I realized with a start that my memories of this part of the city were formed in the 1960’s when I lived here with my family. Not far from our house on north 34th street was a Kroger grocery store on 35th Street where we did most of our food shopping. Usually, my mother did the shopping in a tearing rush on her way home from some place more interesting. She always forgot something essential like milk and then had to send one of…

I want to talk about a recent trend I have noticed. It seems that these days food cannot be itself but must be dressed up, even tarted up in an attempt to turn it into something it was never meant to be. What’s wrong with plain baked chicken with some lemon or rosemary and thyme? Why does the local deli where I sometimes shop for quick dinner s find it necessary to coat it with roasted red pepper mixed with goat cheese? Or you might see some perfectly innocent pieces of chicken lying there. You think: those will be nice…